Perfectly Unmatched Read Free Page B

around Damian. She’ll notice if I look too anxious when I check my phone, so I try to do it with a blank face.
              A woman with strong forearms rubs her hands in a slow, luxurious rhythm down along my spine and up again. I breathe the smell of lavender and a mix of other essential oils deep into my lungs, hoping I can be chemically tricked into not worrying by all the supposed relaxers in the aromas.
              “Benelli, your father and I have been meaning to ask you if you wanted to visit Aunt Abony a few weeks earlier than we’d planned this summer. A couple of the families will be going to the lake, and your father and I were thinking we’d join up later. I know I’ve been so neglectful about getting any meetings and dates lined up for you.” Her voice is lazy and a little slurred from the way her cheek is pressed hard into the fluffy towel under her face.
              Aunt Abony is my father’s sister, a crazy artist who lives in Hungary on the outskirts of the Youngblood family property. I love her cozy, bright house and the long days spent lounging near the lake, walking through the woods, and reading curled in a big chair in a sunny corner.
              But I have things to patch up here, with Damian.
              “I’d rather leave with the family, Mama.” I take a minute to breathe against the long, slow rub of the masseuse’s hands on my skin. “There’s plenty of time for all that this fall, when you’ve had some time to relax.”
              What I’m saying isn’t exactly a lie, but it burns my tongue to tell it.
              “Such a good girl. So sensible,” Mama murmurs sleepily.
              I cut a look in her direction and see that her eyelids are fluttering shut. When a long snore rattles from her nose, I tell the woman giving her a rubdown to extend her massage by twenty minutes and excuse myself to the private bathrooms.
              Wrapped in a thick terrycloth bathrobe, I press Damian’s contact on my phone and wait through the rings. I leave a short, simple, direct message that might be a little bitchy, but oh well. I’m feeling pissed. If he wasn’t hell-bent on dragging his feet and being a stubborn ass, we’d have announced our engagement and he might be headed to the lake with my family in a few weeks. I don’t think there’s enough time for that now.
              By the time we get back home, I need to get busy helping Ithaca through a tricky new set of theorems, then there’s dinner and coffee with mom, so the night clicks by quickly. I decide it will be easy enough to wait Damian out.
              And it is.
              Fairly easy.
              For another day or two.
              But when one or two days slide into the first full week, then a second, I start to get unnerved. We’re both passionate, aggressive people. It’s part of why we were always so attracted to each other. But, no matter how brutal our verbal sparring could get, nothing ever kept us from talking for more than a week. Usually a single text or call from me had Damian crawling back, begging for us to figure it all out and make it work again.
              My pride stings more and more as the days go by, like an infected bug bite spreading a little pool of venom wider and wider into my system. Finally the burn is too much to bear, and I push my resistance aside and tell my parents I’m going to check on some rental properties my father had been eyeing for a few weeks. Instead, I head straight to Damian’s work.
              I know something serious is wrong the minute my heels click on the lobby tiles. Damian’s cousin, Freddy, gets up from behind the glossy front desk, wipes his hands on his dark suit pants nervously, and heads in my direction.